Wednesday

I finally got Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers yesterday in the mail. Barbara, Jason and I played a couple times and I tell you, the game didn’t end well. The gameplay is similar to the original Carcassonne game but instead of farmers, you have hunters; instead of thieves, you have fisherman; instead of knights, you have gatherers. Cities are replaces with forests, roads are replaced by rivers and farms are now meadows. That’s all fairly straightforward but now there’s a new rule that says if you finish a forest that contain a gold nugget, you get to draw and place a bonus (special) tile. This happens if you finish any forest, even you don’t ‘own’ it. Here’s what happened during the first game:

Barbara: Great! Just finish off my forest! I’ve only picked up ONE bonus card since the beginning of the game! You guys have gotten them ALL

Amy: [Tile freezing 4cm from placement] Barbara, Jason and I have only picked up two each… There’s a whole bunch left. Besides, you’re going to be getting- two, four, six… twelve points for the forest after I complete it.

Barbara: Whatever. Just finish it.

Amy: [Moving tile away] Maybe I’ll just put it over here.

[Silence]

Barbara: Jason! GO! It’s you turn.
* * *

You see, these “bonus” tiles inadvertently turned my sister into a bitch. If you’re going to play this game, be forewarned. She bitched about me taking long turns during the second game of Hunters and Gatherers, asking if I going to “see if that tile piece fits into ALL the open areas? … HURRY UP!!” And there’s a loophole in the scoring that Jason abused to the maximum. Instead of finishing the game in the 45-65 point range, Jason finished the first game with 101 and the second with 123. We referred to “putting down a half-assed fisherman or gatherer to collect and return to your pile in one turn” as pulling a “Jason.” Not cool.